It's Texas
Independence Day, and well wishes to everyone from that state, with its
awesomely idiosyncratic politics, beautiful landscapes, and very tasty food. Of
course, Texas Independence Day is not about Texas declaring its independence from the United States, but Texas declaring its independence from Mexico. Still, I
thought it might be a good time to check in on some popular U.S.-based independence
or secessionist movements. (And to boot, everyone should read Graeme Wood's killer
dispatch from limbo states from Abkhazia to Somaliland in our last issue.)
5. Cascadia. A proposed Greenpeace-loving,
vegan-friendly, wired and caffeinated liberaltarian republic comprised of the
U.S. states of Oregon and Washington plus the Canadian province of British
Columbia. Cascadia would hypothetically be one of the 20 largest economies on Earth
-- home to Starbucks and Microsoft, among other companies. In its own words: "An
international economic relationship? A republic? A bioregion? A cooperative
commonwealth? A network of communities based on mutual aid? A utopia? Cascadia
is a lot of things to a lot of different people."
4. Nantucket.
Home to the wind-swept summer homes of the uberwealthy, this tiny pork-chop
shaped island off of the coast of Cape Cod, along with its big neighbor, Martha's
Vineyard, attempted to secede from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the
United States in 1977. Some locals have since proposed secession to found a more
socialist republic. (They might have more luck asking those summering for help
turning it into an off-shore tax haven.)
3. The Green Mountain Independence Movement.
A nonviolent citizens' movement that advocates for Vermont to secede due to
the "the tyranny of Corporate America and the U.S. government" -- or because "Vermont
has been dragged into the quagmire of affluenza, technomania, megalomania,
globalization, and imperialism by the U.S. government in collaboration with
corporate America," as another site puts it. See also this site on other
New England secessionist or independence movements.
2. Alaska. The Alaska Independence Party, the Last Frontier's third-largest, advocates not for secession, but for a public referendum on it -- since the United States didn't hold one when Alaska became a state in 1958. "Alaskans were robbed of the choices we were to have as a non-self-governing territory, and steam-rolled into the current classification of a State," the party says. "Alaska first!"
In 2006, one Scott Kohlhaas wrote an initiative calling for secession (or a vote on it), kicking off a legal battle on the issue. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled: "Because the initiative seeks a clearly unconstitutional end, the lieutenant governor correctly declined to certify it. We therefore affirm the judgment of the superior court."
1. Texas. Even
Gov. Rick Perry (in the midst of a gubernatorial primary vote against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson today) thinks
it should consider seceding, just maybe. Alas, secession is not
constitutional, despite what some insist. Either way, it seems like a bad
idea.
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